Review: Rugby 2006 - stuff.co.nz

****Â½
Xbox: Not a lot has changed for this year's rugby offering from EA.

The haka was included for the international market, but you watch it once and then skip it, so it's a pretty pointless addition.

This year, EA's main focus was getting the game to look like today's rugby, such as giving the player the option to offload the ball while being tackled and taking quick lineouts as well as quick penalties.

The game's controls for the basic moves haven't changed much because the controls were nicely handled anyway.

If you're like me, the first time out you'll play as either the All Blacks or Crusaders. Big mistake â€“ because unless you've being playing the game for a while, you're going to get nowhere as the competition will run rings around you.

And that would have to be the only downside of Rugby '06 â€“ the difficulty is such that if you miss the first tackle then the other team will score almost every time.

The game mode lineup is impressive. Included are the licensed Tri-Nations, Six Nations, 10 Nations, Super 14, Lion's Tour, Guinness Premiership and the unlicensed World Championship and European Cup, meant to represent the Rugby World Cup and Heineken Cup.

Also included is World League, a franchise mode in which you start with a Division 3 team and work your way up to the top.

Having Grant Fox as a guest commentator might have sounded like a good idea, but he is too scripted and ruins it.

There are some decent sound effects during the game but they're usually drowned out by the commentary.

The on-field animations are fantastic, especially the high tackle, which EA added this year. Most of the time it results in a penalty, but giving an opponent the Jerry Collins' treatment is amazingly satisfying. There are some graphical hiccups, but nothing too major.

Rugby '06 has some flaws for EA to iron out, but with the new additions, the game does show an improvement.

AdvertisementAdvertisementIf this trend is anything to go by, then next year's should be even better.

Ah give him a break - we all know that if he was smart he would have just copied and pasted a review from somewhere else months ago and tried to pretend that unlike everybody else in NZ that he had played the game.

And we all know that stuff employees (can't call them journalists) get paid 5c an hour and all of the bananas that they can eat.

It is funny about what he said in regards to missing a tackle and a try being scored. Isn't that like rugby anyway. Most times if you miss a one-on-one tackle and they break the line then the chances of a try being scored is pretty high. Not always of course but the percentage would be high.

I wonder what level he was playing on and with what team. I find that unless my tackling goes way astray (missing two or three tackles in a row) the AI only ever scores after a bit of pressure on my line - at least four or five phases. I find it easy to track back and at least make a tackle on the player who made the initial break from the missed tackle.

Idiot. Maybe he is a league fan or just hates EA with a vengence and really who would blame him, right!?